


Snow Day

by MrTulkinghorn



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Horror, Interns & Internships, Night Vale, Nightmares, Radio, Snow Day, The Weather (Welcome to Night Vale)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 13:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrTulkinghorn/pseuds/MrTulkinghorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As far as strange occurrences go, a snow day in a desert is one of the strangest that the sleepy town of Night Vale has lived through. Cecil gives us the news and updates concerning this peculiar storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow Day

**Snow Day**

 

The universe is a chilling and distant emptiness, hiding a menacing consciousness that no one comprehends, but everyone desperately fears. _We_ are the universe.

 

Welcome...to Night Vale.

 

( _theme music plays_ )

 

Early this morning, before nearly anyone was awake, the City Council held a press conference to address what local scientists are referring to as a “snow day.”

 

No one attended the press conference, but – if you were like me, dear listeners – your sleep was disrupted by an inexplicable chill and nightmares of monstrous black beetles, their chitin glistening like crude oil, reaching out with sticky, bristled feelers and claws for your eyes. You might have screamed. You. Might. Have. Screamed.

 

When local reporters, still bleary and vaguely concerned about the safety of their eyes, finally appeared on the scene, they found that the City Council members were still there staring up at the ashen, tumultuous sky. Their eyes rolled back into their heads and drool slithered down the sides of their gaping mouths, and they groaned softly in unison at the horror that is still to come. The Sheriff has reportedly interpreted this to mean that we are officially in a state of Watchfulness and Deep Suspicion –that’s the sickly, neon green color flecked with a sort of eggplant purple on your charts…you know, right underneath Aching Fear of Something Unknowable– until the snow has passed.

 

Now, I don’t know about you, listeners, but I have personally never believed in “snow.” Scientists have always _claimed_ that it was snowing _somewhere_ …but that’s the kind of purposely vague answers that scientists will give to _any question_ , questions like “Why didn’t you come home last night?” and “What do you think about my friends?”

 

Snow – and isn’t that just a ridiculous word, Night Vale? Like, just say it out loud a few times. Snow. _Snow_. **Snow**. Ssssnow. SsssnoooooooOOOOoooow….. Ridiculous! – Snow may be a thing in, say, Pine Cliffs, but it’s not for civilized, forward-thinking citizens like us! No, let the wild men have their “snow” and their mysterious black pits to which they sacrifice their elderly and infirm. _Not here_ , _Night Vale_.

 

The question remains, though. If snow isn’t coming…what is? Information to follow as the story develops.

 

We now go to school closings.

 

Due to the weather emergency, the following institutions will be closed:

 

  * Night Vale High School
  * Night Vale Community Center
  * Night Vale Adult Re-Education Center
  * Night Vale Technological Institute of Ygmagorrah
  * The Half-Mad Leper Under the Overpass Who Sometimes Steals Your Children and Teaches Them Home Economics.



 

Night Vale Elementary school will also be closed, mostly due to a lack of funding and interest and **not** the current weather emergency.

 

Night Vale Community College will run on a Butchered schedule.

 

Night Vale Junior High School will remain open in spite of declining enrollment due to a recent outbreak of leprosy.

 

This just in, Night Vale. Intern Brandon has just returned from the press conference which has been abandoned by everyone except for the City Council members, who are, according to Brandon, _still_ staring up at the stormy heavens, encrusted in their own saliva and eyes permanently turned inward to show only their milky, jaundiced depths.

 

Brandon says that, despite the swirling smoky clouds gathering above Night Vale, the temperature does not appear to be…any different! It is still very hot, and arid, but just to be safe, people are putting on their parkas and scarves, and eye patches, and carrying small bloodstones in their pockets, which is really just good judgment in an emergency such as this one.

 

And now, a word from our sponsor.

  

( _prerecorded message from Cecil plays_ )

 

_You wake up at that strange hour, the one that’s too far from the dawn to be safe or comfortable, but deep enough into the dark to be full of nightmares. Your heart is pounding, but you’re not sure why. You just feel an overwhelming fear that you are being hunted. You blindly swipe the air for a light switch and you hit it, and the light dispels…whatever it was that was watching you sleep._

_In your deepest and haziest memories, you can just barely see it. A dark, reptile form that sits on your chest or comes out from your chest, and smells like the turned earth of an ancient grave. All black and liquid, it sits and waits and becomes bitter in its waiting._

_In that strange hour, you shiver although it is not cold. You know that it will come to you, or from you, and for you again if you sleep. So, you will not sleep. But for how long can you save yourself? Already, your eyes feel heavy and warm. Already, your eyes feel heavy and warm._

_Already, your eyes --_

 

_Dunkin’ Donuts. America runs from Dunkin._

  _(live broadcast resumes)_

Let’s go to sports. Last night at –

 

Oh. **Oh.** Oh, _listeners._ It’s…well, the only word I have to describe it is… _snowing!_ I can’t believe it! I am looking out my window _right now_ and there are infinitesimal, gossamer specks drifting delicately from the sky. It’s _everywhere_ , covering everything in an eerie silence and a phosphorescent shimmer!

 

Look! I can see some of the local children building snow-homunculi! And over there, by the car lot… oh ( _laughs_ ), those adorable little scamps are making snow angels, which is really quite a feat when you consider how many twisted limbs you’d need to make an accurate depiction of an angel.

 

Ah, and here comes the Sherriff’s Secret Police to forcefully and intrusively remind the children that angels do not exist.

 

Listeners, the sky is a flurry of these glowing phenomena. I urge you all, take a few moments out of your day, right now, to go outside and experience this once-in-a-lifetime event. And if you are on your second or even third lifetime, I still recommend taking a walk outside as it – is – _gorgeous_! I will remain here, steadfast, at my post as we go now to…the weather.

  

_(["Piece of Mind" by Francis Pastorelle](https://soundcloud.com/francispastorelle/piece-of-mind) plays_ )

 

Night Vale, reports are flooding in claiming that today’s weather emergency is not, as previously reported, _snow_ , but some strange, ethereal presence descending from the sky. Citizens who have been exposed to the white particles for any length of time report hearing whispers, fierce whispers that buzz constantly in their ears. These murmuring voices were described as “familiar” and “insistent” as if they were the voices of long dead loved ones trying desperately to convey some deep secret that the universe had hidden in its black, meaningless recesses; a secret that could save or doom us all.

 

During the last segment, I asked Intern Brandon to collect a handful of this mysterious dust and bring it back to the station to confirm these reports. He returned holding a chunk of the powder, and he stared at it. Intently. Without blinking.

 

“Brandon?” I asked tentatively. He did not answer. He looked at the powder as if seeing it for the first time and being paralyzed by what he was so unfortunate to witness each time.

 

“Brandon?” I asked again.

 

“No. Nonono. Please. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” he said through tears that froze solid in his eyes and on his face.

 

“Riiight,” I said, rolling my eyes. I mean, I like to think I’m a pretty fair boss. Cool, even. Hip! As long as you work hard, and live through the day, you won’t get any problems from me! If he wanted to have the rest of the day off because of the weather emergency, all he had to do was ask! Ugh, I _hate_ melodrama.

 

“I will. I will. I will. I will,” he nodded mindlessly at the small heap of dust in his hand. He turned and grabbed one of our Night Vale Community Radio ritual daggers and left the station without another word.

 

To Brandon’s family:

 

**Run.**

 

Do not stop to pack or gather personal valuables. Leave your home. Leave now. The young man you knew as Brandon is gone and the thing that is likely stalking toward your home is NOT Brandon. I repeat: _run_. Run far and hope that it tires and relents.

 

And thank you for Brandon’s service and bravery. He will be missed.

 

Listeners, as we speak, the _snow_ …or whatever it is…appears to have stopped. The sidewalks and storefront awnings and lampposts are still caked with the ageless dust, but even this small monument of the experience we shared today is disappearing. Not _melting,_ mind you, they’re sort of blinking out of existence like tiny flicker-flashes, and with them, the last connections to the people we have lost. People are returning to their homes and, I sincerely hope, nothing is returning with them.

 

It is funny, isn’t it Night Vale, how random and unpredictable our world can be. I mean, we woke this morning, drenched in night terrors and catching glimpses of greasy, black things in the corners of our vision, and we fully expected to go about our usual routines. And then, this snow day happened, something completely out of our control. And...we got to share a moment, Night Vale. A moment of community. A moment of childlike innocence. Playing in the snow. Listening to the fevered whispers of our long-dead loved ones or things masquerading as our long-dead loved ones. And we were _together_. True, many citizens were hospitalized for heat exhaustion caused by being out in a desert climate in parkas, scarves, and winter coats. Yes, Intern Brandon…and I assume Intern Brandon’s ritually dissected family…will never be the same again.

 

But the rest of us? We were able to experience the chaos of our earthly existence…and we survived.

 

I leave you now with the sounds of a baby gurgling and cooing, which will inexplicably stop after an hour, followed by an hour of a woman’s muffled sobbing.

 

Goodnight, Night Vale.

 

_Goodnight._

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome To Night Vale is a production of Commonplace Books. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor and produced by Joseph Fink. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. 
> 
> This episode’s weather was Piece of Mind by Francis Pastorelle. Find out more at https://soundcloud.com/francispastorelle.
> 
> Check out commonplacebooks.com for more information on this show, as well as their books on The Unused Story Ideas of H.P. Lovecraft and What It Means To Be A Grown-Up, and while you’re there, consider clicking the donate link, that would be cool of you.
> 
> Today’s proverb: Time heals all wounds. Unfortunately, time does not exist and any restorative properties are just hopeful sparks imagined in the darkening, frightened, void of your mind.


End file.
